Should be easier to invest in renewables

I say the States, but in truth it is Guernsey Electricity, but who are the major shareholders in that company?

We should and could be leading the world in renewables, we have the perfect climate and tidal flow, we have investors queuing up to invest in our eastern seaboard development, with massive sustainable energy options, and we choose to ignore them. We’re extremely lucky to live on Guernsey, but we cannot afford to ignore the future ramifications of doing nothing.

From a concerned but positive islander.

NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD.

Editor’s footnote: Guernsey Electricity chief executive officer Alan Bates replies: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond. We are delighted to outline again the reasons for the way we approach the adoption of local renewables.

Guernsey Electricity recognises the importance of renewable and low carbon sources of energy and the need to decarbonise the use of energy on the island. Over 90% of the island’s electricity will come from these sources via our link with the European grid, which has recently been fully re-established. We remain, however, keen to ensure that the use of local renewables is understood in terms of both fairness and equity for all electricity customers.

In the majority of cases when islanders install their own renewable energy systems behind the electricity meter, such as solar panels, there are no additional charges and, in fact, if the systems produce too much electricity we will buy this back. In situations where such systems may not be able to meet their requirements all of the time – for example when there isn’t enough sunshine or if there’s a maintenance issue – Guernsey Electricity offers the insurance of maintaining continuity of supply from our network. Most residential solar panels have around 3kW of capacity and there is no specific charge for these sized systems to have this back-up. However, for much larger scale renewable or combined heat and power systems with 25kW of capacity, a stand-by charge is applicable based on our current tariff structure. These systems are generally at a more commercial level. The standby charge allows us to recover the fixed costs for maintaining the back-up supply. We have to do this to stop those fixed costs otherwise being picked up by all other electricity customers. Whilst this approach has been appropriate in the past to recover these costs, we now believe that greater transparency is required in the way these are recovered and reflected. We are therefore proposing restructuring our tariffs so that everyone will be aware of the costs that need to be recovered to provide an electricity network and how much electricity actually costs. In this way, all our customers can make informed decisions about investments into renewables, without the misleading signals created by our existing tariff structure.

Guernsey Electricity is currently exploring local community-scale solar power projects which will allow the island to benefit from local renewables and ensure the costs of any such scheme are shared fairly by all. We are mindful of affordability and any such projects should be at cost parity and should not cost our customers any more. If any commercial entities wish to explore becoming a local commercial-scale renewable generator, then we would request they contact us directly to discuss these opportunities further.